Trumpeter John Martin (Giovanni Martino)

Trumpeter John Martin (Giovanni Martino) IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON of June 25, 1876, General George Custer and five companies of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry Regiment prepared to attack a massive Indian encampment on the banks of the Little Big Horn River. A few minutes earlier, accompanied by a handful of officers and scouts, Custer had climbed a small hill and watched as one element of the planned envelopment, a column of three companies under the command of Major Marcus Reno, had commenced their attack on the village. Sensing that the moment to strike was at hand, Custer and his column of nearly 210 troopers, scouts and civilians raced along the bluffs overlooking the valley floor for several hundred yards before halting at the edge of a ravine (Medicine Tail Coulee). As the troopers anxiously readied their weapons and checked their mounts, Custer spoke privately to his trusted adjutant, Lieutenant William W. Cooke, and ordered him to send for reinforcements and additional ammunition. Sweat beaded from the Lieutenant’s thick beard as he penned the famous last dispatch - “Be Quick. Bring pacs.” - before handing it to John Martin, a young bugler attached on orderly service to Custer’s column that very morning. While Custer and his command rode to their fate, Martin raced back on their trail to find the remaining Seventh Cavalry companies under the command of Captain Frederick Benteen. Although the Indian warriors quickly overwhelmed and annihilated Custer’s column, Martin survived and lived on another forty-six years. The history books, aided by journalists, would remember John Martin as “Survivor of the Custer Massacre” and the “last white man to see Custer alive.” Yet the story of John Martin neither begins nor ends with the Little Big Horn. On the morning of January 29, 1852, a small bell rang near the back wall of a home in Sala Consilina, a small town tucked into a hillside in the Salerno region of southwestern Italy. The primary occupant, Maria d’Amelio, rushed to the source of the ringing. A niche in the wall, once home to a window, now housed a horizontal wooden wheel, topped by a small round cabinet that protected a cradle. The bell’s chimes faded only to be replaced by the creaking wooden wheel. When it stopped, Maria looked down to find an infant nestled in the cradle. Another baby had been abandoned, left in the “wheel” (la ruota) by the mother to be cared by others. So common was the practice that homes like Maria’s (a Proietti domiciliata or Home for Foundlings and Abandoned Children) were created throughout Italy, and many other parts of Europe, for the purpose of caring and eventually placing the unfortunate infants. 1 To protect the mother’s identity and provide a safe refuge for the infant, foundling homes – modeling cloistered convents - installed a simple rotating wooden mechanism: la ruota (wheel). A wooden wheel laid on its side replaced a low window; affixed to the wheel was a small cradle or cabinet. A long wooden pin held the wheel in place as it revolved. As the newborn was placed in the open cradle, the mother or midwife rotated the wheel, and the baby revolved into the home; to notify the attendant of the new arrival, a small bell hanging by the wheel was rung. Was this infant the same John Martin (Giovanni Martino) who carried Custer’s final dispatch at the Little Big Horn in 1876? History books refer to Martin’s surname at birth as Martini (and not Martino), but little effort was made to confirm Martin’s true origins, including his actual place of birth. In 1997, Professor Giuseppe Colitti and Dr. Michele Esposito, two scholars living in Sala Consilina, began an extensive investigation for information relating to Martin’s birth. Their initial examination of civil birth records in Sala for the assumed original surname, Martini, failed to produce any males by that name for the period of 1851-1853 (an earlier search in Roma proved equally futile). Esposito’s familiarity with Sala’s archives proved fortunate, however, and they soon located a leather-bound register specifically used for recordation of abandoned children. In a two-page document entitled Atto di Nascita di Esposizione di un Bambino Proietto (Act of Birth for an Abandoned Child), they found proof of Giovan Crisostimo Martino’s birth. During this same period, a freelance Italian researcher and author named Claudio Busi was checking various immigration records including ship and passenger manifests, and the Battery Conservancy’s Castle Garden database of immigrant registration. The ship’s manifest for the S.S. Tyrian listed Giovanni Martino as a 21-year-old laborer from Italy who boarded the ship in late March 1873 in Naples. Despite the mismatched surname, the manifest information matched the known data for John Martin. Immigrants to America quickly realized the societal disadvantages of being different. While language barriers hindered a seamless assimilation, foreign accents would eventually fade and immigrants could expect to blend in more easily with an anglicized name. Amending his name from Giovanni Martino or Martini to John Martin is a logical modification. Later, a reversal of sorts may have occurred, and his new American surname, Martin, was “Italianized” to Martini. While never forgetting his Italian origins, he attached more significance to his current identity as John Martin, American citizen and soldier. After his baptism in Sala, the infant Martino was placed with a local wet nurse, Mariantonia di Gregorio (Botta), wife of Francesco Botta. Her ability to breastfeed the baby implied she had recently 2 given birth, but the fate of that child is unknown. The Bottas received a stipend from the Comune of Sala to help in their care of the child. His place within the Botta family are unknown and his childhood years are a blank period for which Martino offered little clarification. According to Italian journalist and author, Pasquale Petrocelli, nine-year old Giovanni met Giuseppe Garibaldi when the latter made a triumphant entrance into Sala. Garibaldi’s volunteers - a small force called the Spedizione dei Mille (Expedition of the 1,000) - were marching north to conquer Naples during the long fight for Italian unification. Over the next few years, news of Garibaldi’s triumphs stirred Martin’s imagination, and surely planted a seed of hope that would help him escape a dismal future as a sharecropper or day laborer. Petrocelli wrote that a few years later, Giovanni - now 14 years old - left Sala to join Garibaldi’s forces as the General’s men marched close to Sala on their way north. Too young for combat, he served in some other capacity, very likely as a drummer boy. In later years during his many interviews, Martino proudly recounted marching with Garibaldi, but offered few details. Little evidence exists to confirm or refute his assertions. He eventually returned to Sala in 1870, but a young and energetic Giovanni must have grown restless with the life of a farmer or laborer. There was a big world beyond the valleys and farms of Sala. Martino embarked for America in March 1873 on the S.S. Tyrian. After twenty-seven long days at sea, the Tyrian arrived in New York Harbor where immigrant passengers were registered at the Castle Garden (now Castle Clinton) facility. Once he completed the registration process at Castle Garden, Giovanni Martino crossed the East River into Brooklyn, a New York City borough filled with recently immigrated southern Italians. Unfortunately for Martin, the United States was in the grip of a severe national recession – the Panic of 1873 – when he arrived. With few employment opportunities available, especially for illiterate and unskilled laborers from southern Europe, he opted to enlist in the U.S. Army on June 1, 1874. Army pay was low but guaranteed as was room, board and clothing. Martin was assigned to serve as a trumpeter in Company H of the Seventh Cavalry Regiment. Reflecting his new life in a new country, Giovanni Martino’s new “American” name - John Martin - appeared for the first time in his enlistment documents, as did a physical description of the twenty-one year old: 5’ 6” in height with brown eyes, black hair, and a dark complexion. Following limited training at Jefferson Barracks (Missouri), the Army’s recruiting depot, Martin joined his new Company H comrades at Fort Abraham Lincoln (located near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota) in time to march with them on an expedition into the Black Hills (Dakota Territory). Persistent claims of a bounty of untapped mineral resources, 3 perhaps even gold, mounted and the Federal government ordered Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer to confirm the reports. As the large expedition lumbered out of Fort Abraham Lincoln on July 2, 1874, as they, Martin rode with his new unit. When they returned in late August, news of their discovery (gold) had been broadcast across the country through telegraphs lines and newspaper headlines. As prospectors and speculators rushed to the territory hoping to strike it rich, the Lakota (Sioux) and other Indian tribes protested vehemently to the government about incursions onto their sacred land, the Black Hills. The Army tried to remove the trespassers, but their resources proved unequal to the task. Eventually, unable to stem the tide of interlopers, the government issued an ultimatum to the tribes (primarily Lakota, Arapaho, and Cheyenne, along with contingents of Kiowas and Comanches): They had to relocate to designated reservations by the end of January 1876. Although many Indians had litte recourse and resigned themselves to life on the government reservations, others were outraged and encouraged by Hunkpapa (Lakota) holy man and spiritual leader, Sitting Bull, the “hostile” tribes determined to resist and refused to move to the reservations as ordered.

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